hes and smoke, that announces your
approach to the volcano. The iron waves of other years have traced their
large black furrows in the soil. At a certain height birds are no longer
seen; further on, plants become very scarce; then even insects find no
nourishment. At last all life disappears. You enter the realm of death and
the slain earth's dust alone sleeps beneath your unassured feet.

--Madame De Stael: _Corinne: Italy_.

EXERCISES

Discuss the following selections with reference to the impression given by
each:--

The third of the flower vines is Wood-Magic. It bears neither flowers nor
fruit. Its leaves are hardly to be distinguished from the leaves of the
other vines. Perhaps they are a little rounder than the Snowberry's, a
little more pointed than the Partridge-berry's; sometimes you might
mistake them for the one, sometimes for the other. No marks of warning
have been written upon them. If you find them, it is your fortune; if you
taste them, it is your fate. For as you browse your way through the
forest, nipping here and there a rosy leaf of young wintergreen, a
fragrant emerald tip of balsam fir, a twig of spicy birch, if by chance
you pluck the leaves of Wood-Magic and eat them, you will not know what
you have done, but the enchantment of the treeland will enter your heart
and the charm of the wildwood will flow through your veins. You will never
get away from it. The sighing of the wind through the pine trees and the
laughter of the stream in its rapids will sound through all your dreams.
On beds of silken softness you will long for the sleep-song of whispering
leaves above your head, and the smell of a couch of balsam boughs. At
tables spread with dainty fare you will be hungry for the joy of the hunt,
and for the angler's sylvan feast. In proud cities you will weary for the
sight of a mountain trail; in great cathedrals you will think of the long,
arching aisles of the woodland: and in the noisy solitude of crowded
streets you will hone after the friendly forest.

--Henry Van Dyke: _The Blue Flower_.
(Copyright, 1902, Charles Scribner's Sons.)

Running your eye across the map of the State, you see two slowly
converging lines of railroad writhing out between the hills to the
sea-coast. Three other lines come down from north to south by the river
valleys and the jagged shore. Along these, huddled in the corners of the
hills and the sea line, lie the cities and the larger towns. A great
majo